


Down on our own shield

by miabicicletta



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Casualties of crime fighting, Character Death, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-27 14:13:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7621546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miabicicletta/pseuds/miabicicletta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You know,” John says, hollowed out with grief.  “I met her the same day I met you. At the very beginning.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Down on our own shield

**Author's Note:**

> Had this one kicking around for a while. Don't hate me. Dedicated to lovely new friend [cherish--these--times](http://cherish--these--times.tumblr.com), who is the genius editor behind [one of your favorite Sherlolly videos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqHYBFAaHLE&feature=youtu.be). Trust me. She's a gem, in all ways. 
> 
> Title comes from the [Jakob Dylan song of the same name](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDyeGm-K-l4).

* * *

Her large brown eyes are bright with pain. 

“Oh God.” Her hands hover over the wound, shaking. “Bad.” Her voice is raw, trembling. “Bad bad, _badbadbad_ …”

He bellows over his shoulder. “John!” The sound of his voice echoes off the cement walls, a demanding shout into unyielding darkness. “Get the medics now!”

 The ashen pallor to her skin tears a bottomless hole in his gut. “It’ll be fine.”

“Fine?” A note of hysteria climbs with her voice. “ _Fine_?”  

She knows he is afraid. Just as she knows the bullet has placed a catastrophic rupture to vital organs, is draining her inferior vena cava, and that with every second that ticks past, her chances of survival diminish.

“That’s what I said.” He presses down on the _very not good_ bullet wound Moran put in her upper thoracic cavity. “Just don’t _panic_.”

Between them and the west-side surface entrance off Goswell Road, lies seven-hundred plus meters of Metropolitan line service elevators and corridors and a crawlspaces to navigate. _Too much distance, too much time._ Eight and a half minutes, minimum, till medical assistance. 

“You’re–” she struggles to say. “-usually a much better liar than that.”

She closes her eyes and steadies her breathing. Clutches at his hands.

“Greg? Did he get the hostages out?”

“Yes.”

She huffs a sigh of relief. “Okay.” She bites her lip and breathes out slowly. Air blows between her lips, smooth, even, controlled. _Seven._

Her face cracks, voice dissolves into a whimper. Tears blink out beneath her lashes. She winces in pain, but does her best to mask the grief. “Good work tonight.”

 “Could do without you getting shot.” He elevates her head on his thigh, presses harder on the wound. _Six_.

A stream of blood flows through his fingers. Its tentacles soak into his slacks and her sale-price jeans, her coat, her lank, disheveled brown curls. It pours out, and out, and out. _Five._

“Yeah, could do.” She laughs, weakly. Her breathing is rapid. She clings to his hands. Wet. Warm. Viscous. He cannot stop it. _Four._  

“Hey, promise me something, okay? Don’t stop. They need you. Oh God.” She tips her head back, overcome.

 _Where are they?_ “Stop talking.”  

“Don’t,” she says. “Don’t.”

Her grip slips. Her breath slows. _Three._

 “No! Wait. Talk. Please. All the talking. You cannot—John? Lestrade _!_ ” He looks back, roars over his shoulder again, louder, more desperate this time. His breath catches at the tears on her face. “Listen to me, okay? No. No! No one is dying here tonight. You can’t. JOHN?!Listen _._ I'm right. I’m always right. You know it. You know I am _…”_

 _Two_. 

She looks up at him, swallows. “You’re really not, Sherlock Holmes.”

_One._

When the medics arrive, he is still holding her hand.

 

 

 

He carries her body himself. Not the least he can do for her (he has already done that). It is only the last thing he can do.

Silences fall from the hi-viz wearing men and women at the scene. Lestrade is ashen as the gurney is rolled away. Sherlock cannot meet his eyes.

John pounds his fists twice, then twice more against a squad car, heaving and silent. He sighs the sigh Sherlock has catalogued to mean he is experiencing feelings that remind him of Afghanistan: Anger. Rage. Regret. Grief.

“You know,” John says, hollowed out with grief.  “I met her the same day I met you. At the very beginning.”

Lights flash in muddy water. He answers, somehow. “It was the next day.”

John runs a hand down his face. “Same day.”

“Wrong.” His voice comes out flat. Monotone. Why does it matter? Why is his arguing the point when there isn’t any?

“No, it was.”

“It was the next day.” He looks to John. “I’m not wrong.”

John looks out over the scene at his side, expression dark. “She shot Moran?”

“Yes.”

“Christ.”

An officer of the Met is sobbing.

Several hostages are being given medical attention. 

Murders have been prevented tonight, and lives have been saved.

Just not all.

There is nothing to say. Nothing.

“Sherlock!”

He turns.

Her large brown eyes are bright with pain.

There are bruises at her throat. A cut along her cheek. “Someone said Sally was hurt...” Molly starts. She reaches out. “That she was shot...” 

Feeling no longer fails him, but words do. John is shaking his head. Molly looks between them, seeing the truth of it. Her brows pinch with grief. Her mouth contorts.

She slips forward, into his arms, but holding him, swallowing a heartbroken breath as she presses her face to his chest. He feels panicked, but puts his arms around her. John nods his assent. _Good work. Well done._ He gives them space. Molly sobs without sound, and he holds her close, winds his hands into her hair until she composes herself enough to look up. He touches her tear-streaked face.

He doesn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry,” he says.

She smiles, but not. “Me too.”

 

 

 

At Baker Street, she curls into him, her bare skin to his. A raw crescent cuts across her cheekbone, mottled and bruised, and the sight of it makes him long for a 10. Climb into a boxing ring. Lose himself in a haze of morphine and heroin. Take on a dragon.  

He rests his head against her chest, feeling the rising, falling cadence of her breath.

“It’s not your fault.” Molly runs her fingers through his hair. The monstrous compulsion abates. “You know that it’s not your fault. Tell me you know that.”

He sighs. “What I know is Sally Donovan should not have gone into that place alone. She let _sentiment_ get the best of her. She behaved irrationally, illogically, and defied police procedure…” he rambles. His fingers tighten on her waist. He looks up. He looks Molly in the eye. “And I know that as a result of her actions, she not only eliminated Sebastian Moran, but saved the lives of thirty-one people. Yours included.”

He looks away, pressing his head against her again. “I did not like her, but I respected her. She was good.” He swallows. “On the side of the angels.”

“She was,” Molly agrees.

“I don’t know what to do with that.”

They fall asleep. When he wakes, there is a new quality to his grief, and hers. Something more raw, more clear, more tender, more needy, necessary, mad, urgent, desperatesudden _sentimental_ than the haze he’d stumbled through the night before.

Above her and inside her, overcome and undone he looks into Molly’s eyes. Molly looks back. She is fierce. Certain. Steady.

Sherlock wishes he had a fraction of her strength. Of her emotional intelligence. He does not know what to do with the death of Sally Donovan. What to do with it, or about it, or for it. 

 

 

 

He will not know what to do about her death for a long time. A long time that passes quickly somehow, like water evaporating on a heated surface. Not until a day comes when he looks into a new pair of brown eyes for the very first time.

These eyes, they are large and they are bright, but not with pain. Not blue, either. No. His daughter is exceptional.

Sherlock Holmes smiles. “Hello, Sally." 

**Author's Note:**

> See what I did there?


End file.
